Steel_Shaman

Didn't one of the Devs say recently that for water control to "look right" it would require Ultra Mode and that because of this they didn't want to do it? I could swear I remember reading that somewhere.

Y'know, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my personal feelings on this issue. A thought occurred to me this morning that I think may explain how I (and maybe some others) feel.

Every MMO that I have ever played that HAD an endgame, was ABOUT that endgame. In every one of them, the phrase "the real game starts at the cap" is bandied about all the time, and for those games it's true. I remember a guildmate in A Certain Fantasy MMO asking once what he could do to help out the guild. The response he got was "get to the cap and gear up for raiding, that's how you help the guild."

Obviously, CoH has really never had a true endgame until now. The focus of the game has always been about leveling characters, and having lots of alts. Now we have an endgame for the folks that have asked for it. But as I've already said, I've never seen an MMO that had an endgame that didn't focus entirely on said endgame. I think that is the reason for my concern, and the reason I'm fighting tooth and nail for solo options.

I just don't want to see CoH go the route of other MMO's. Are we at that point now? No of course not. But auras and capes at level 1 for alts is I feel a step in that direction. I understand the Devs wanting to give people lots of rewards as part of the endgame. But I don't want to see that endgame become the only way to get cool new stuff in game. I really do worry that is what will happen. One need only look at the entire rest of the MMO industry to understand why I worry.

We've had 7 years of an established culture of altism in this game. Having lots of alts doesn't typically mesh well with endgame systems. And given the number of people I've seen complain about how tedious the grind is to "gear up" all their alts in the Incarnate system, I would daresay the same holds true here, at least for now. So no, I do not begrudge you your fun, not at all. But I do not want your fun to become the only valid path to rewards in this game. Call me a doomsayer if you must, but there's an entire industry of precedent fueling my feelings on this issue. Announcements like the most recent one aren't helping in that regard either. Now if the Devs come back and say "hey we're also adding these other auras and travel power graphics that you get this other, solo way" I'll be just happy as a clam.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. I really need to go to work now.

Exactly my friend. There really is no incentive the Devs can offer to get me into those trials short of sending me real world money. And even then it would have to be a significant amount and I still might say no. The more shinies they hang off the trials, the more irritated with the Incarnate system I become. I understand there are people that these costume unlocks and auras will motivate into playing the trials. I just happen to not be one of those folks. And yes, I am starting to feel a little left out because of it.

Actually my personal take on it is that if they don't keep people running the trials, the Incarnate system will quite simply collapse under its own weight. For the system to function there must be a decent number of people willing to do it at all times. I don't deny that business concerns probably do play a role somewhere in there as well, but I don't think it's the sole reason behind it.

But as for the topic at hand, yes I would pay for a booster pack that gave me those features without hesitation. If that's the only way I can get the stuff I want without doing what I consider a painful and stressful activity then so be it. I wouldn't particularly like having to pay cash for it, but that would be my decision. After all if the cash was that big of an issue I would simply buy an enormous supply of aspirin and play the trials.

I see no flames. It really doesn't have to go that route.

The one thing that could make me reroll my 50 Tanker is if Brutes got Ice Armor and Ice Melee. I'd respec all his IO's off him and redo the character in an instant.

I just don't believe all the "it hurts Fury" crap. I have run my Ice/Ice Dominator with a friend's Brute, using every trick I had to slow the mobs down, including staying in melee with Arctic Air running, and he had no Fury problems at all.

Oh, I laughed so hard.
Bravo sir. Bravo.

Dark Control. I would do backflips and stand on my head if they gave it to us. I also think a Sonic Control powerset would be nice.

Y'know you touch on something that has been bothering me too.
When all this was first announced, I distinctly remember the Devs saying that the end game system would be worked on by a separate Dev team headed up by Matt Miller, and that would leave the rest of the Development staff open to do other projects. I remember thinking at the time that was a good idea, because it would give people the end game system they wanted while preserving the Devs' ability to do updates to other areas of the game. In practice, this does not appear to be what is happening at all.

What makes you say this? Just curious how you arrived at that conclusion.

Lol, I hear ya on the forums getting to you. They pretty much did get to me over the weekend and I've had to take a step back.

I fully expect any solo Incarnate story arcs to be challenging. I wouldn't have it any other way. Not saying you feel this way at all, but I get the impression from lots of people that they think "solo" automatically means "super easy." It doesn't necessarily mean that at all. I think it would be highly unrealistic for people to expect to be able to take any random build and solo endgame material with it.

I suppose what really bugs me about the recent announcement is the types of things they're choosing to hang off the endgame system as carrots. I'll admit I'm more than a little irritated at the capes and auras for alts at level 1. I understand the desire to give people plenty of incentive and a variety of goals for the endgame, but I just don't feel giving advantages (albeit cosmetic ones) to alts is the right idea. Especially not when those advantages are features that have been requested for the core game for quite some time. It reminds me of the criticism they got for having the Super Tailor as part of the Science booster. A lot of people were unhappy with that one too.

Ah well, here's to hoping they do indeed unveil a solo system at some point. I won't lie, I would prefer it be sooner rather than later. And honestly, I think that would be good for the playerbase. If nothing else, it would defuse the growing split over this issue before it gets any worse.

Ah I see now. There is technically a solo way to do it, but it's prohibitively long and expensive in terms of inf. I was under the impression that to unlock everything past Alpha, you absolutely had to do the trials. I just looked them up on the Wiki and see now that you can technically purchase even the unlocks with threads and inf. I say technically because from what I'm seeing of the conversion costs and time required, you'd have to be freakin' nuts to do it that way.

Yeah........that sucks.

Thanks for the info. I'm willing to bet then that the people I've been seeing talk about 100+ trials are trying to get multiple characters through the system. I probably just misunderstood and thought they meant ONE character.

Thank you. I will admit I lead a bit of a charmed existence when it comes to drops. I seem to get purple drops quite often when I play my 50's, a fact that has caused my friends I run with to curse me to no end. Also, when I decide to really go for broke on a character's build I tend to play that character exclusively until it's "done," then I move on to the next one.

So I suppose that yeah, I'm not really your typical soloist, and that I probably should have pointed that out when I mentioned the time it took to get my Warshade's build together. But you are right, a soloist would definitely take longer than a teamer to "IO out". My original point was not really about the time spent so much as it was that it could be done. To my knowledge with the current setup of the Incarnate system, a soloist literally cannot progress through it at all beyond the Alpha slot.

In regards to the number of trials required, are those numbers you're stating to completely get all the way to Tier 4 in all the currently available slots? The reason I ask is I have seen people claim they have done 100+ trials and STILL aren't "done" with the slots currently in game. Not contesting your numbers, just confused because the numbers you're stating seem quite low compared to what I've seen others say. Again, I don't know, because I won't touch the trials myself with a 10 foot pole.

As for time required to outfit a character solo in the IO system: my Warshade is my absolute favorite character. If I had to declare any one character my "main" it would be him. As a result, he's the one I've spent the most effort into outfitting. I don't know how much in total the IO's in his build would "go for" on the Market, but at a guess I would say at least a billion, possibly more. I've known people to immediately roll up Warshades themselves after seeing him in action. I achieved this on him in a little over a month of dedicated play after he hit 50. Now granted, that was not 100% solo, but the vast majority of it was. So I guess I disagree with your contention that truly maxing out a character through solo play is prohibitively time intensive. I will concede though, that back before the merit rewards system it would have been much worse than it is now.

But you basically did say that in your first post.
I think I personally have been too concerned with dancing around the issue and pie-in-the-sky game theory debates to be able to just state it that succinctly. Seeing your post made me think "yes! that's what I've been trying to say."

Just one thing I'd like to point out that popped into my head when reading this: yes the Trials are short by design. An individual trial can be run very quickly. But how many trials does it take? Since I haven't done them I honestly don't know, but my impression is it takes quite a few (as in more than a dozen). So while yes an individual trial is short the overall time investment required is quite large. But then, that's typical of endgame grinds. All the ones I've ever seen are set up that way, so in that regard CoH's is no different.

I think what does give us a slightly different situation is that, as ThatGuy said in his first post, prior to now a solo player could achieve the exact same "level of power" as a team player. That is no longer the case. It is that change that has caused me to question the lack of a solo option in this system.

Very well said. I agree with this completely.

Wow.
That's incredibly discouraging. So the Devs acknowledge they don't want to give us options. That's just....wow. Honestly, words fail me.

You guys seem interested in making auras and capes no longer be level-locked then. That's a good thing. So why not just do it? Why tie it specifically to the Incarnate system? What's the thought process behind requiring someone to participate in that system for something this big?

Exactly. I noticed that when my Bane goes back into Hide, his shadow vanishes. The first time it happened I was like "what the heck?" then I thought "you're invisible, dummy! no shadow!" I was actually impressed the Devs took the time to code something like that as part of the shadow tech.

I did a Renault SF last night and was very pleased with my system's performance. Even with a full 8 man team and power effects going everywhere it was all smooth as silk. I need to see if any of my characters has a mission on that blasted new warehouse map with the "blue room" and see how that does.

To Sam: I feel your pain. You're in exactly the spot I was until a few days ago. My new system is not top of the line by any means, but its vid card (GTX 470) seems to play very nicely with CoH.

Actually for myself it's a case of making damn sure the Devs don't forget for even one second how thoroughly unhappy some of us are with the current end game design. I'd rather it doesn't take them until Issue 40 to get around to these solo and small team options they are promising. The best way I know to do that is to keep reminding them.

Now that I think about it, I could get behind branching if it happened earlier, and didn't force a respec. Let the first few levels have common powers all characters of the AT share, and maybe every few levels open up access to different pools, allowing for further customization of the character's abilities. Perhaps choosing some pools would lock access to others and unlock still others. It could be interesting.

A good point. The Devs seemed determined to have the Red and Blue epic AT's possess a unique "schtick" no other AT had: shapeshifting with Kheldians and branching with the Soldiers. I could see a third epic AT having something completely unique if they followed that premise.

Exactly.
I knew with absolute certainty the moment Ultra mode was announced I was about to start seeing performance issues even though my current system greatly outstrips the minimum for CoH. And sure enough, as soon as Ultra Mode hit I had to tweak a few options down because all of a sudden my system couldn't handle them even with the optional Ultra Mode turned completely off. The same exact thing happened with CoV launch and the small graphical update it gave us too.

I can run a new game released in March at 50 fps. CoH? 30 if I'm lucky. Fortunately, I have a new system coming tomorrow (yay!) and it will most likely make Ultra Mode look amazing. But to Sam's point, it shouldn't take a beefy system to run CoH.

I have not seen numbers like that in each of the level ranges in a very long time. I would assume you play on Virtue or Freedom, yes?

"The Death Penalty is fine" translates to "I don't want to be challenged"?
Really?
I think I'm going to have to leave this thread now because any response I could give to this would be inflammatory at best.

Have fun everyone!